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8 February 2018

REVIEW: Honeywell Lyric C1 WiFi Camera

See one C1

Just like action cams before them, smaller, lower spec, and cheaper WiFi security cameras are flooding the market. We've reviewed a butt-load in the past, but have found that anything sub-£100 is usually only good for some light, detail-less video capture in a small area of your home... and not much else. However, it seems that even the cheaper cams are upping the specs, with one example being the Honeywell Lyric C1 WiFi Camera.

The Honeywell Lyric C1 WiFi Camera is a small, relatively low-res camera with not too much to write home about in terms of looks. The sensor captures video in only 720p (good, but not great), and there is a short-range night vision mode for nighttime security. Right now, you can pick it up on Amazon for around £90, putting it very much into the category of budget cams.

However, the Honeywell Lyric C1 WiFi Camera surprised us by featuring quite a lot more than we were expecting. For starters, the cam sits on a very clever little base which attaches magnetically, allowing you to pitch the cam forwards and backwards, to change the angle of capture. It is not battery-powered, unfortunately (unlike these babies), but it does draw from a Micro USB power adaptor which is included.

Next to the USB port on the underside you'll also find a Micro SD Card port - with included 8GB card. Ooo. The card is used to store recorded video clips when there is no connection to the internet via WiFi, as normally those would go straight to the free cloud storage. Yes, free cloud storage. Yay! It might only be 24 hours worth, but to get any for free is rare these days.

In the app, which is pretty minimalist and clean, you can highlight certain areas in the Honeywell Lyric C1 WiFi Camera's field of view as motion sensor zones. If anything moves in that zone, you'll get a notification to your phone, and the cam will save the footage. It seems to work quite well, although we did occasionally get alerts when something moved outside of the zone, such as activity through a window or a pet. After a few goes, we got it right, being a bit more selective about where we set the zones.

As we said, the Honeywell Lyric C1 WiFi Camera also features night vision, but as we also alluded to, it isn't great. The range of the IR lights (which is what we assume it uses to see) is pretty low, and overall the image is quite poor. We can't, therefore, recommend this as a dedicated nighttime security cam, suggesting it be more of a 'see your gaff while at work' sorta thing.

So, although cheap, cheerful, and plain looking, the Honeywell Lyric C1 WiFi Camera pleasantly surprised us by possessing features you don't normally get at this price. For a first WiFi cam, or to cover a small, relatively quiet area of your home, this could do the job well.

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